NEW YORK – Playboy.com launched the “Women of Home Depot” pictorial Tuesday, showcasing six of the retailer’s “sexiest” female employees.

Playboy.com said in May it was searching for the sexiest women at Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, to “shuck their orange smocks” and pose nude for the online pictorial.

“Playboy is an American icon and I am so excited to have been chosen as one of the models for this feature,” said Rachel Parks, one of the feature’s models. “This has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

The adult men’s publication ran similar ‘Women of Enron’ and ‘Women of Starbucks’ photo spreads in Playboy magazine in 2002 and 2003.

Last November, Playboy.com ran its first version of the ‘Women of….’ pictorial featuring women from Wal-Mart.

For its part, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, criticized the spread, saying it was “in poor taste” and went against its image as a family store.

Nevertheless, the Wal-Mart spread turned into the Playboy.com’s biggest success to date, according to John Thomas, editor of the Web site.

“It was a real watershed moment for Playboy.com in terms of the number of people who actually paid money to get access to the pay-per-view part of the feature,” he said.

Thomas said the Home Depot casting call elicited about 400 responses from employees. “That’s much more than we had anticipated. We think the Home Depot feature could be even more successful than the Wal-Mart one.”

The pictorial, which is exclusively on Playboy.com, features six models including a sales associate, a supervisor and a cashier. Playboy.com paid the models for the feature but would not disclose the amount.

Who’s Thomas looking at next?

“Maybe ‘Women of CNN’ will be next,” he joked.

“I’m sure there are a lot of nervous brands out there,” he added. “We have between six to eight names that we’re considering. One idea is a ‘Women of fast-food’ spread.

“The whole idea of this feature is to surprise people with the unexpected. People thought the Wal-Mart idea was a joke but the real beauty of it was the enormous buzz it created. We knew it would be a success when Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien joked about it.”

Home Depot could not immediately be reached for comment. But the company had said it didn’t endorse or support the pictorial when Playboy first announced it was doing the feature.